od a word your lordship
has been saying.'

'Not understand me!' exclaimed Lord Byron with a look of the utmost
distress: 'what a pity! Then it is too late,--all is over!' He
afterwards, says Moore, tried to utter a few words, of which none were
intelligible except 'My sister--my child.'

When Fletcher returned to London, Lady Byron sent for him, and walked the
room in convulsive struggles to repress her tears and sobs, while she
over and over again strove to elicit something from him which should
enlighten her upon what that last message had been; but in vain: the
gates of eternity were shut in her face, and not a word had passed to
tell her if he had repented.

For all that, Lady Byron never doubted his salvation. Ever before her,
during the few remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her
husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever
dissipated, the stains of sin for ever removed; 'the angel in him,' as
she expressed it, 'made perfect, according to its divine ideal.'

Never has more divine strength of faith and love existed in woman. Out
of the depths of her own loving and merciful nature, she gained such
views of the divine love and mercy as made all hopes possible. There was
no soul of whose future Lady Byron despaired,--such was her boundless
faith in the redeeming power of love.

After Byron's death, the life of this delicate creature--so frail in body
that she seemed always hovering on the brink of the eternal world, yet so
strong in spirit, and so unceasing in her various ministries of mercy--was
a miracle of mingled weakness and strength.

To talk with her seemed to the writer of this sketch the nearest possible
approach to talking with one of the spirits of the just made perfect.

She was gentle, artless; approachable as a little child; with ready,
outflowing sympathy for the cares and sorrows and interests of all who
approached her; with a naive and gentle playfulness, that adorned,
without hiding, the breadth and strength of her mind; and, above all,
with a clear, divining, moral discrimination; never mistaking wrong for
right in the slightest shade, yet with a mercifulness that made allowance
for every weakness, and pitied every sin.

There was so much of Christ in her, that to have seen her seemed to be to
have drawn near to heaven. She was one of those few whom absence cannot
estrange from friends; whose mere presence in this world seems always a
help to every